Thursday, June 2, 2005
D.A. BROWN: QUEENS MAN CONVICTED OF KNIFE ASSAULT ON WIFE’S EX-BOYFRIEND; FACES UP TO SEVEN YEARS IN PRISON
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown today announced that a Queens man has been convicted after a jury trial of assaulting his wife’s ex-boyfriend in June 2004 by stabbing him in the abdomen.
District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant attacked the victim with a knife, stabbed him and pierced an artery, nearly causing the victim to bleed to death. The conviction ensures that justice has been done and that the defendant has been held accountable for a violent crime.”
District Attorney Brown identified the defendant as Salvatore Acquista, 22, formerly of 149-31 15th Drive in Whitestone, Queens, a construction worker/mortgage broker. The defendant was found guilty of Assault in the Second Degree by a jury of seven men and five women that deliberated for seven hours over two days following a two week trial before Supreme Court Justice Richard L. Buchter. The defendant will be sentenced on June 27, 2005 and faces up to seven years in prison.
The District Attorney said that according to trial testimony on June 18, 2004 about 4:15 p.m. on 149th and 32nd Avenues in Whitestone, Queens the defendant cut off a vehicle driven by the victim, Michael Iuliano, 27. Both the defendant and the victim exited their vehicles and the defendant stabbed the victim once in the left side, piercing an abdominal artery and causing extensive and nearly fatal blood loss.
Assistant District Attorney Patricia A. Malloy of the District Attorney's Kew Gardens I Trial Bureau is prosecuting the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Robert J. Masters, Bureau Chief, Therese M. Lendino and Robin D. Leopold, Deputy Bureau Chiefs, and the overall supervision of Senior Executive Assistant District Attorney for Trials James C. Quinn and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Trials John H. Larsen.